In the name of all that
is most sacred in life--of cigars! I am no professor of social economy
for the instruction of fools. Let us breakfast! It costs less to give
you a tunny omelette than to lavish the resources of my brain on you."
"Do you bargain with your friends?"
"My dear fellow," said Henri, who rarely denied himself a sarcasm,
"since all the same, you may some day need, like anybody else, to use
discretion, and since I have much love for you--yes, I like you! Upon
my word, if you only wanted a thousand-franc note to keep you from
blowing your brains out, you would find it here, for we haven't yet
done any business of that sort, eh, Paul? If you had to fight
to-morrow, I would measure the ground and load the pistols, so that
you might be killed according to rule. In short, if anybody besides
myself took it into his head to say ill of you in your absence, he
would have to deal with the somewhat nasty gentleman who walks in my
shoes--there's what I call a friendship beyond question. Well, my good
fellow, if you should ever have need of discretion, understand that
there are two sorts of discretion--the active and the negative.
Negative discretion is that of fools who make use of silence,
negation, an air of refusal, the discretion of locked doors--mere
impotence! Active discretion proceeds by affirmation. Suppose at the
club this evening I were to say: 'Upon my word of honor the
golden-eyed was not worth all she cost me!' Everybody would exclaim
when I was gone: 'Did you hear that fop De Marsay, who tried to make
us believe that he has already had the girl of the golden eyes? It's
his way of trying to disembarrass himself of his rivals: he's no
simpleton.
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